Cagney Quotes & Sayings

Find your mark, look the other fellow in the eye, and tell the truth. — James Cagney

I'm a great believer in conversational rhythm. I think in terms of rhythmic dialogue. It's so easy, you can talk naturally. It's like peas rolling off a knife. Take the great screen actors and actresses, Bette Davis, Eddie Robinson, Jimmy Cagney, Spencer Tracy. They all talk in rhythm. And rhythm and movement are the life of the screen. — Lorenz Hart

A James Cagney love scene is one where he lets the other guy live. — Bob Hope

You dirty, double-crossing rat. — James Cagney

You know, the period of World War I and the Roaring Twenties were really just about the same as today. You worked, and you made a living if you could, and you tired to make the best of things. For an actor or a dancer, it was no different then than today. It was a struggle. — James Cagney

I used to watch 'Cagney & Lacey' with my mum back in the day. I can't remember any of their storylines, but I remember really knowing these two friends like I would know real people. — Darren Boyd

I apologize, Miss Dylan.' Cagney said. 'During the night, all of my lord's stupidity rushes to his head. — K.M. Shea

I grew up in an Irish Catholic family, and I think they force you to watch every James Cagney movie. — Jimmy Fallon

It seems whenever we get too high hat and too sophisticated for flag-waving some thug nation comes along and decides we're a pushover all ready to be blackjacked. And it isn't long before we're looking up mighty anxiously to be sure the flag is still waving over us. Jimmy Cagney as George M. Cohan in Yankee Doodle Dandy — George M. Cohan

Absorption in things other than self is the secret of a happy life. — James Cagney

I never had the slightest difficulty with a fellow actor. Not until One, Two, Three. In that picture, Horst Buchholz tried all sorts of scene-stealing didoes. I came close to knocking him on his ass. — James Cagney

My father was totally Irish, and so I went to Ireland once. I found it to be very much like New York, for it was a beautiful country, and both the women and men were good-looking. — James Cagney

When I was a kid going to the movies, we'd go because Bogart was in the movie, or Cagney, or John Wayne. We didn't know what the story was about or anything. — Dennis Farina

I never said, 'MMMmmm, you dirty rat! — James Cagney

There's not much to say about acting but this. Never settle back on your heels. Never relax. If you relax, the audience relaxes. And always mean everything you say. — James Cagney

James Cagney, Steve McQueen, I loved all those guys. I grew up loving the movies but had no desire to be in them. — Mark Wahlberg

When I was growing up, I was obsessed with 'Cagney and Lacey.' — Tamsin Greig

Before 'Cagney and Lacey,' we didn't follow officers home to find out what they did when they took their badges off and emptied their guns. So the idea that these women also had lives outside of work was really interesting to play. — Tyne Daly

My childhood was surrounded by trouble, illness, and my dad's alcoholism, but as I said, we just didn't have the time to be impressed by all those misfortunes. I have an idea that the Irish possess a built-in don't-give-a-damn that helps them through all the stress. — James Cagney

It's imposible to even imagine Lucy Ricardo without Ethel Mertz, and because of that, this dynamic duo set the bar for future female friendships on TV. Consider Laverne and Shirley, Kate and Allie, Mar and Rhoda, Wilma and Betty, and Cagney and Lacey - where would they have been without Lucy and Ethel. — Elisabeth Edwards

Movies were invented for Jimmy Cagney, and he was invented for the movies. A perfect match. — Clint Eastwood

I want people to say at the end of my day, you know, like I used to say about Sidney Poitier and James Cagney and Joan Crawford and Red Skelton and those guys and Bill Cosby. They did quality and substance. You always remember them. — Bernie Mac

The Postman Always RingsTwice. — James Cagney

I'm told that Sherlock Holmes never said, "Elementary, my dear Watson" (at least in the Arthur Conan Doyle books) Jimmy Cagney never said, "You dirty rat"; and Humphrey Bogart never said, "Play it again, Sam." But they might as well have, because these apocrypha have firmly insinuated themselves into popular culture. — Carl Sagan

Once a song and dance man, always a song and dance man. Those few words tell as much about me professionally as there is to tell. — James Cagney

My favorite actor who played villains - who could play anything, really - was Jimmy Cagney. — Malcolm McDowell

If you think of the 1930s in film as the decade of Gable and Lombard, Cagney and Harlow, Stanwyck and the Marx Brothers, think again. The biggest star - No. 1 in the 1936, '37 and '38 exhibitor polls - was a three-time box-office champ before she was 10. Shirley Temple, singer, dancer, and prime exemplar of Movie Cute, owned the '30s. — Richard Corliss

The years were never an element, because my parents didn't age, they simply sickened. My father was mean and cocky like Cagney all the way to the dump. Flat on his back, his bones poking this way and that like the corpses in the camps, he still had a fiery eye, as though, but for those two coals, the grate held ash. There's no easy way out of this life, and I do not look forward to the day they put those tubes up my nose, and a catheter shows my pee the way out like some well-trained servant. I saw how my father's body broke his spirit like a match; and I saw how my mother's broken spirit took her body under the way a ship stinks after being disemboweled by an errant bag of ice. — William H Gass

Back at home, days later, feel cranky and tired. Sit on the couch and tell him he's stupid. That you bet he doesn't know who Coriolanus is. That since you moved in you've noticed he rarely reads. He will give you a hurt, hungry-to-learn look, with his James Cagney eyes. He will try to kiss you. Turn your head. Feel suffocated. (from "How") — Lorrie Moore

In the movies, Bette Davis lights two cigarettes and hands the second one to James Cagney. It was just so glamorous and romantic. — Loni Anderson

But I've always believed that Christine Cagney shouldn't be played past a certain age. — Sharon Gless

The old movie stars like Bogart, James Cagney, Jimmy Stewart, they weren't this gorgeous, striking six-foot man who's rippled with muscles. — Jack Huston

There's a trend toward anti-heroes now, and I think it goes back to guys like Bogart and Cagney. They seemed to have no compassion, and they were always alone. — Jim Brown

Tina Fey and I have 15 things in development: 'Laverne and Shirley', 'Starsky and Hutch 3', 'Cagney and Lacey', 'Wonder Twins Activate From Two Hot Broads', 'Little House on the Prairie: The Musical: The Movie'. — Amy Poehler

But he had always believed in fighting for the underdog, against the top dog. He had learned it, not from The Home, or The School, or The Church, but from that fourth and other great moulder of social conscience, The Movies. From all those movies that had begun to come out when Roosevelt went in.
He had been a kid back then, a kid who had not been on the bum yet, but he was raised up on all those movies that they made then, the ones that were between '32 and '37 and had not yet degenerated into commercial imitations of themselves like the Dead End Kid perpetual series that we have now. He had grown up with them, those movies like the every first Dead End, like Winternet, like Grapes Of Wrath, like Dust Be My Destiny, and those other movies starring John Garfield and the Lane girls, and the on-the-bum and prison pictures starring James Cagney and George Raft and Henry Fonda. — James Jones

You don't psych yourself up for these things, you do them ... I'm acting for the audience, not for myself, and I do it as directly as I can. — James Cagney

We worked so hard," [Joan Blondell] said, "and hardly ever had a day off ... Saturday was a working day and we usually worked right into Sunday morning." Joan's good nature may have worked against her in the long run. While fellow Warner Brothers workers Bette Davis, James Cagney, Olivia de Havilland and Humphrey Bogart fought like lions for better roles and more creative input, Joan took things in stride, at least through the early 1930s. "I just sailed through things, took the scripts I was given, did what I was told. I couldn't afford to go on suspension - my family needed what I could make. — Eve Golden

New Orleans is 5 feet below sea level, which means that holes dug in the ground immediately fill with water. Coffins were punctured and sunk with weights, which didn't stop them from floating up out of the cemeteries and down the streets of the French Quarter on stormy nights. The solution was to bury people above ground, in what are called vaults. — James Cagney

Voices are like fingerprints, from Cagney to Bogart. They never lost it. My voice is instrumental in categorizing me. — Sylvester Stallone

I hate the word superstar". I have never been able to think in those terms. They are overstatements. You don't hear them speak of Shakespeare as a superpoet. You don't hear them call Michelangelo a superpainter. They only apply the word to this mundane market — James Cagney

You dirty rat... — James Cagney

I got a part as a chorus girl in a show called Every Sailor and I had fun doing it. Mother didn't really approve of it, through. — James Cagney

Mind your borders, Lord Dooley.' Cagney said. Dooley gave her his mournful eyes. 'But I'm trying to expand them.' 'Careful, they will shrink,' Cagney promised. Dylan shook her head. 'What?' Callan asked her. Dylan hesitated a moment before writing out, I'm glad I don't own land. Callan started laughing so hard he had to sit on a bench to recover. — K.M. Shea

Well what do you do with a character like Christine Cagney and you tell her she can't have things? — Sharon Gless

I'm sick of carrying guns and beating up women. — James Cagney

Learn your lines ... plant your feet ... look the other actor in the eye ... say the words ... mean them. — James Cagney

Perhaps people, and kids especially, are spoiled today, because all the kids today have cars, it seems. When I was young you were lucky to have a bike. — James Cagney

Outside of my family, the prime concern of my life has been nature and its order, and how we have been savagely altering that order. — James Cagney

Yeah, I've always been accused of having a sense of mischief and I'm very flattered that you say you can see it in the roles I play, because I think that's important, even if I do play intense characters, like especially Christine Cagney. — Sharon Gless

Though I soon became typecast in Hollywood as a gangster and hoodlum, I was originally a dancer, an Irish hoofer, trained in vaudeville tap dance. I always leapt at the opportunity to dance in films later on. — James Cagney

Follow the wisdom of the great actor, James Cagney, you hit your mark, you look the other guy in the eye, and you tell the truth. — Larry Merchant